Internet Archive - An opportunity?

[aldona]

(I was going to post this in the Adventist Media forum, but there is very little traffic there, so I'm posting it here.)

Is anybody familiar with the Internet Archive? (whose motto is "Universal Access to Human Knowledge")

Or in their own words;

Quote:

The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

Here is the link:

Internet Archive

It's like being lost in a mammoth public library, with texts of books, music scores, moving images, audio, on any topic you can think of.

I was told about this site by my music-loving friends and have found quite a few rare old music scores there.

If you click on "Texts" (on the right-hand side of the page) you can limit your search to just books/ printed material.

Here is "Evidence from Scripture and history of the second coming of Christ about the year 1843, exhibited in a course of lectures", by William Miller (1840).

Link - Second Coming of Christ (William Miller)

Unfortunately, Adventist materials are very few and far between. I have been able to find mountains of material on music, music history, Quakers, other religions, even Freemasonry and esoteric stuff like the Book of Enoch and the Knights Templars...but if you type in "Adventist" and search, there are only about 10 hits.

There must be a lot of people out there with some free time on their hands and a scanner (or other means of converting the printed page to digital images to upload to the internet). I'm sure many of us have old Adventist books either at home, or at our church or college library, that could be contributed.

The Internet Archive encourages individuals (as well as libraries and other organizations) to contribute material. I do not think most Adventists know what a great opportunity this is to get our books and other materials out there for large numbers of people to access and download freely. (or have we become too intimidated by Those In Church Authority and afraid of breaching some kind of copyright or trademark law?)

I am no expert on copyright law, but through my involvement with music score websites like IMSLP, I have learned a lot. I understand that according to US law, material published before 1923 is generally all in the public domain (i.e. no longer under copyright). US laws are different to those of other nations, many of which follow "+50" or "+70" rules (i.e. after the author has been dead for 50 or 70 years, the copyright runs out).

Either way, the works of Ellen G. White and other SDA church pioneers should all be in the public domain. If the E.G White estate has worked out a way around this, and intends to come after individuals who publish such material without profiting from it and with the intention of promoting our faith (evangelism), it would reflect very badly on them, especially in light of Mrs White's exhortation that her writings should be "spread abroad freely like autumn leaves" or words to that effect.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your scanners...

Aldona

[doctorj]

Either way, the works of Ellen G. White and other SDA church pioneers should all be in the public domain.

The Ellen G White Estate have gone one better. The complete writings of Ellen White are freely available and online with a good search engine. You can find this complete set of works at:

The Complete Works of Ellen G White -- fully searchable

With this online service, I don't see the need for repeating it all again on The Internet Archive.

[aldona]

It is good that the works of E.G. White are available- but what about the many, many other old Adventist pioneer books and writings that are out there?

There are a few individuals and organizations who compile CD's of old books from time to time (at various prices - and good for them, it's only fair that they get some return on their time and effort), but is there anyone who would be willing to make stuff like this freely available as a service to the community?

(I have some interesting old books but unfortunately very little free time! and already busy doing this with music.)

Aldona

[Amelia]

A great idea and a good mission. I know there are many books that are no longer published that would be great for this site.

[John317]

Yes, such as all the books by E.J. Waggoner, A.T. Jones, as well as the articles and books of James White. It would also be very useful if they were indexed so we could research how they used various words or understood different Bible texts.

Some of A.T. Jones' books are already available online, but I am not sure about the other two.

[doctorj]

Yes, such as all the books by E.J. Waggoner, A.T. Jones, as well as the articles and books of James White. It would also be very useful if they were indexed so we could research how they used various words or understood different Bible texts.

Many of those authors' books are already online. Try this site for a start:

The Pioneer Adventist Writings

This site is well indexed by Google. For example, you can search only on the domain where these books are reproduced online in web pages using Google, as follows:

Domain Search for "Everlasting Gospel" on the "Adventist Pioneer Writings" site

The "Seventh-day Adventist Pioneer Writings" include full books from James White, J.N. Andrews, Stephen Haskell, John Loughborough, E.J. Waggoner, F.C.Gilbert, Uriah Smith, and others.

So why invent the wheel when many of these books are already online and fully text searchable by Google?

[aldona]

Quote:

So why invent the wheel when many of these books are already online and fully text searchable by Google?

For the simple reason of having all of them easily accessible, together on one large public domain site where large numbers of people go to look for material on a large range of topics.

Probably for the same reason that someone decided to donate a copy of "SDA's Believe - the 27 Fundamentals" to our local public library, instead of just being happy in the knowledge that it is available at ABC bookstores for anyone who wants to take the time to seek it out.

I am aware that many old Adventist books are available online, but last time I was researching something and had to find what I wanted, it took a lot of time and effort to search.

Some examples of recent titles added to the Internet Archive (whose owners obviously did not think it was a waste of time to duplicate and upload them):

Chess Eccentricities (G.H. Verney 1885)

A History of Water-colour Painting in England (G.R. Redgave, 1905)

Regulations Regarding White-Phosphorus Matches (US Internal Revenue Service, 1913)

Some German women and their salons (Mary Hargrave, 1912)

Journal of Sieges carried on by the army under the duke of Wellington, in Spain, 1811-1814 (Sir J.T. Jones, 1846)

Why should every cult and obscure religion, and every collector of trivia and memorabilia, have their work out there in the public arena where it can be easily found, while we sit on our hands and say "why reinvent the wheel"? If you know all of these good online book repositories, why not transfer some of the content to the Internet Archive (I'm sure it would be easy with a few clicks of the mouse)?

Is there something wrong with wanting to have as much information available legally in as many forms and at as many locations as possible?

aldona

[doctorj]

For the simple reason of having all of them easily accessible, together on one large public domain site where large numbers of people go to look for material on a large range of topics . . .

. . . Why should every cult and obscure religion, and every collector of trivia and memorabilia, have their work out there in the public arena where it can be easily found, while we sit on our hands and say "why reinvent the wheel"? If you know all of these good online book repositories, why not transfer some of the content to the Internet Archive (I'm sure it would be easy with a few clicks of the mouse)?

Is there something wrong with wanting to have as much information available legally in as many forms and at as many locations as possible?

I understand your point . . . but . . . the truth is that I don't know all these sites where these old Adventist books are displayed. I went onto Google to find out if they exist online. I searched for about 30 seconds and found a site where these books are, and then on that site it had links to about another 30 sites. Thus, it took me less than a minute to Google search these sites and I had more than 100 books at my fingertips.

There are other ways of gaining traffic for these old books. Sure, one way is to copy them to the Internet Archive. Another way is to write posts like these and build links to these sites where the old Adventist Archives can be found. The more links we build to these sites the more easily they can be found when people search using Google.

My point is that since they already exist why make an effort to create them all over again.

That said, I do like your old school analogy of giving a book to your library, but the way the Internet runs, that analogy is a little less relevant to the way you can make little sites into big traffic pullers on the Internet.

[John317]

Wonderful. Thank you very much for that very valuable information. I'll use it often.